44 ! "><2. \! ..(\ - .. ..... .../' -.-:.:::;:...... ........ --- . .............,. -.....- __ , , /.,.:,:>< ';0' . ) ,,:-, -..: '-::: . :;:' _ .. <<..;0." W{hrl so. What on earth did the "woman" want? Sexual politics in ballet are the re- verse of those in real life. Male dancers wage a struggle for equal rights, some- times with little regard for form. Dur- ing the years of the Trockadero's greatest popularity, N ureyev, then the reigning box-office champion, was in his performances of the classics taking over more and more of the woman's function, making the Prince into the central character, appropriating music and even elements of dance style associ- ated with the ballerina. Other male dancers followed his example. This wasn't the way to male liberation in ballet, and neither was the T rockadero. But by making effeminacy into the whole point the Trocks did more than present a comic spectacle; they defined an issue. They exposed the crux of male envy. They incarnated the urge to become that powerful female icon the ballerina. In psychoanalytic terms, they were the Jungian version of the Tiresias factor, while N ureyev was the Freudian version. It's possible that the Trockadero at- tack on the masculinity issue wouldn't have succeeded nearly so well without N ureyev there to undermine it in the first place. And Nureyev might not have undermined it but for his need to satisfy ever more unreasonable box- \ I t I ...:;;- ----- : .r' . . . ",""" ^^V oN";;, ......... .'", ." , " ,: --, . . office demands. The point is debatable. N ureyev in his very first New Y or k season with the Royal Ballet-the spring, 1963, season-excited contro versy and outrage over his appearances in the classics. John Martin, the Times critic, referred to "repellent personal mannerisms," and characterized him as "a disintegrating force-to the compa- ny, to the works in which he appears, to his own talent." In "Giselle" and "Swan Lake," Martin wrote, "he has been allowed so to shift the emphasis that they become virtually his own production. It is not so much that he remakes them as that he unmakes them, destroying by the extravagances of his personal manner all unity of form and style, and putting in bits and pieces from other productions he has known in a rather pathetic effort to give him- self all the plums. When he makes his first entrance in 'Giselle' with a half- bale of mouse-colored hair worn partly à la Bardot and partly à la schnauzer, one has the shocked illusion that here for the first time Albrecht is being played en travesti. The illusion is forti- fied as the action progresses and his palm-leaf hands describe continuous Spencerian flourishes in the air, briefly resting their fronds from time to time on one collarbone or the other." When N ureyev partners F onteyn, he "is al- ways essentially in competition with the ballerina. He is continually nosing in; when, for example, Fonteyn in a supported position raises her arm, he raises his arm behind her even higher with the palm-leaf waving." All this is malicious enough, though with a grain of accuracy. Nureyev's trespasses were pretty bad and would get worse. But what seems to anger Martin is not just the performances; it's the dancer himself-his whole person- al style, on and off the stage. With a recklessness that rivals the very thing he accuses N ureyev of, he casts suspi- cion on the motives for Nureyev's de- fection, comparing him with Genghis Khan: "He moves in and takes what he wants." And get this: N ureyev is not even a box-office draw. "The only time he has appeared in a performance with- out the genuinely magic Dame Margot F onteyn, the theatre was far from full." Well, if it wasn't full it was not the fault of the ballet fans. The 1963 season was the first and last time that the N ew York ballet world had Nureyev pretty much to itself. Not only had a prolonged newspaper strike cut deep into the Royal's advance sale (a fact that Martin acknowledges) but, more important, the Hurok office, out of fear of offending the Soviet authori- ties, had put off its publicity campaign on Nureyev's behalf. When, in 1965, the campaign was launched, Nureyev